SEO is divided into two parts: on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is a technique that guarantees that your web site is easily accessible by spiders. If your website is not optimised then you have less chance of getting good results in the search engines. Off-page SEO on the other hand is usually not so whitehat and is mostly achieved by building backlinks. That can be achieved by: article submission, blog commenting, social media, directory submission, etc.

There are many many factors that help website’s Search Engine Results Page ranking (Google for one takes into account more than 200 elements). In this article we’ll discuss various positive and various – factors.

Let’s see some + factors:

- Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links (simply the most important factor are incoming anchor links from different web sites and anchor text should be keyword you want to improve the ranking for) - Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag (this is very important factor that is very often overlooked) - Keyword Use in the Root Domain Name (keyword needs to be used in domain name e.g.: keyword.com or new-keyword.com) - Keyword Use Anywhere in the H1 Headline Tag (H1 is the most important and visible H tag therefore it carries the biggest weight, that’s why keyword should definitely be used in H1) - Keyword Use in the Page Folder URL (keyword needs to be used in subdomain name e.g.: yourdomain.com/keyword/page.html)

Now let’s list some factors that will hurt your ranking:

- Cloaking with Malicious/Manipulative intent - Links from the Page to Web Spam Sites/Pages (linking from your web site to spam web sites will only do you harm) - Frequent Server Downtime & Site Inaccessibility (this is the most important factor – web site should be up at all times no matter what; just get a reliable web hosting!) - Hiding Text with CSS by Offsetting the Pixel display outside the visible page area (doing margin: -9999px will hide your link for sure, but search engines are more and more sophisticated and can detect that) - Hiding Text with CSS display:none; (with some CSS you can hide link by setting visibility to hidden but search engines might detect that!)

One of the most important factors is for your site to be online most of the time. You can accomplish that with buying reliable web hosting that usually isn’t the cheapest, but you shouldn’t count your dollars here, because if you’re not online, you don’t exist! I personally recommend Hostgator which is considered one of the best web hosting companies. Their plans are really good, prices good and support 24/7.